Presenter Spotlight: Peter Lieber

He enjoys sharing his business knowledge with entrepreneurs, managers and students, and with an underlying commitment to promoting the further evolution and global integration of Austria's software sector. As the founder of Sparx Systems Central Europe and LieberLieber Software, Peter focuses on the so-called model-based development of software and systems. This new approach is paving the way for innovation in even the most challenging projects, such as the engineering of complex safety-critical systems in alignment with the principles of Industry 4.0.

Friday 8th June - Keynote: EA 14

On Friday 8th of June Peter will be providing a special insight to EA 14, the biggest launch of an EA version ever!

See and feel the new highlights based on your input from last year in the new release. These new features include clearer navigation structure, docked property windows (no need of any modal windows) for almost everything in a diagram, easy change of views and technologies, Decision Modelling Notation (DMN) integrated to BPMN, SysML and SoaML, journal functionality, and much more…

The main focus of this huge release is: focus on your business not on the tool, raise productivity with your models.

25% off last minute tickets!

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EA User Group

Presenter Spotlight: Phil Chudley

Carrying on with our presenter spotlight series I would be amiss not to turn it onto our very own Phil "Chudders" Chudley!

Phil Chudley is a principal consultant at Dunstan Thomas Consulting Ltd. He has been using Enterprise Architect for over 12 years, and has vast modelling experience ranging from UML, BPMN and SysML. He has provided training consultancy for numerous organisations in the UK, Europe and the Middle East. Phil has also developed two extensions for Enterprise Architect, BPMN Generator and EA SafeDelete. Phil’s latest consultancies are the development of scripts for automated project workflow and validation / export of elements and relationships, and the management of RDF vocabularies including the import and export of RDF XML files.

Thursday 7th June - Fundamentals of MDG Creation

Room: Alt - 13:30

During this training workshop, Phil will provide attendees with hand-on experience in the development of a Metamodel using Enterprise Architect’s MDG technology. Specifically, attendees will gain practical experience in:

What an MDG can contain.

Defining tagged values prior to developing an MDG.

Using the Model Wizard to structure an MDG Project.

Defining stereotypes for Elements and Connectors.

Overview of shapescripts to define appearance for elements and connectors.

Defining a custom toolbox.

Defining a custom diagram.

Generating, deploying and testing the MDG.

Overview of Quicklink definition.

Friday 8th June - Lessons Learned from the API

Room: Alt - 14:05

Over the past few years, Phil has developed many scripts and extensions for Enterprise Architect, many of which have “pushed the limits” of the API. During this session Phil will share his experiences of using the Enterprise Architect API for both scripting and extensions. Phil will highlight common mistakes when developing scripts and extensions and will share specific experience in:

Adding elements to diagrams.

Adding legends to diagrams.

Adding attributes to elements.

Managing tagged values.

If you would like to join us at the EA User Group in London this June to hear what Phil and our other experts have to say then head on over to the EA User Group website to pick up your tickets!

EA User Group

Presenter Spotlight: Guillaume Finance

Continuing our spotlight on this year's presenters at the EA User Group in London we look now at Guillaume Finance who will be presenting on the Friday morning of the event.

Guillaume is a long time member of the EA User Group committee and an active member of the EA Community at large.

Guillaume has been using Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect for over 11 years to build and maintain models for software projects & to produce functional & technical specifications based on the expected level of deliverables. In his day to day role as a modelling and EA expert/consultant at VISEO, Guillaume also provides support, expertise & coaching services on UML, SysML and Sparx EA.

Friday 8th June - Extending EA with custom scripts to cater for specific needs and user requests using Sparx API

10:00 - Tab Room

Enterprise Architect supports most modelling languages and notations i.e. UML, BPMN, SysML, and ArchiMate. Whether EA is used to build models for a software application, identify business processes, define the system with the MBSE approach, or carry the IT landscape via the business, application and technical layers, customizing the notation with stereotypes and adding tailored features is almost a recurring request.

Automated tasks and additional features can be built using EA API via scripts, add-ins, external tools, etc. Based on a large number of scripts implemented for clients involved in software, data, and systems engineering, Guillaume will share his experience on this growing activity over the past years:

Overview of the covered topics (custom Excel import/export, model QA, save users' time in avoiding repetive or time consuming tasks, manage EA users & groups via Excel, run a reverse on unsupported languages such as Fortran...).

Demonstration of a selection of scripts.

The need to organize and name scripts.

Debug scripts.

Compatibility with different DBMS and the Cloud connection.

Hints and custom scripts to publish scripts from the "dev EA project".

Addressing the lack of sub menus with more than 20 scripts.

Automatically trigger scripts with Geert's free ea-matic add-in.

If you would like to join us at the EA User Group in London this June to hear what Bert and our other experts have to say then head on over to the EA User Group website to pick up your tickets!

EA User Group

Presenter Spotlight: Bert Dingemans

As we prepare for the London EA User Group this June we will be looking at our presenters & what they are bringing to the proceedings this time around.

To kick things off we will be having a look at what our old friend Bert Dingemans is up to.

If you have been to any of the London or European events over the last few years then you will have undoubtedly run into Bert as he is an extremely active member of the EA Community. Bert is the author of the book "Data architecture in practice" and of articles and whitepapers focusing on Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, data architecture, integration, management and modeling techniques. He also works on various architectural products such as a wiki on information architecture, and a Data Management component in EA.

At the London 2018 event Bert will be taking part in both days of the event delivering a training session on day one and two separate presentations on day two.

Thursday 7th June - Advanced data modelling in Enterprise Architect

Data modelling has multiple dimensions and layers. Think about the conceptual, logical or physical data model layers or modelling languages like UML, ERD or ArchiMate.

In this hands on session Bert will guide you through the creation of a small but full model on a sample case in Enterprise Architect. During the session you will undertake the practical application of techniques such as UML class modelling, ArchiMate Passive Structure viewpoints, CRUD matrix and ERD. Furthermore you will discuss and apply a technique for integrating the three modelling layers. At the end of this session with Bert you will have an example of an integrated data model which you can extend to your own situation.

NOTE: If you would like to participate in this session you will need to bring your own laptop with EA already installed.

Friday 8th June - Using Enterprise Architect for architecting a Big Data Platform

11:10 - Tab Room

Many organisations are investigating the possibilities of Big Data solutions, for example in the energy sector. Introducing Big Data is new and traditional approaches are of limited use. Think about introducing data-lab functionalities, innovative and agile approaches, new technologies like NoSql or Hadoop. How are you going to support these activities in an organisation as an architect and how can Enterprise Architect support you in adding architectural value.

In this session Bert will discuss a reference architecture for a Big Data Platform, modelling techniques, architectural patterns and agile approaches all supported by the use of Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect, including examples of big data patterns, solutions and templates based on ArchiMate.

15:15 - Tab Room

Enterprise Architect has great implementations of multiple techniques for creating data models. For example UML class diagrams, the extended data model, ArchiMate and matrix views for specific association types. This gives you the opportunity to create conceptual, logical and physical data models. However integration of these modelling layers is possible but can be rather tedious.

Therefor EAxpertise is developing an Open Source extension named IDEA (Integrated Data Entity Architecture). This Add-on is based on numerous scripts and screens making the integration of the before mentioned data modelling layers simple and fully automated. Furthermore the extension has an advanced web interface giving non-modelers access to all your (integrated) data models. Participants of this session will receive a sample repository containing the automation scripts.

If you would like to join us at the EA User Group in London this June to hear what Bert and our other experts have to say then head on over to the EA User Group website to pick up your tickets!

EA User Group; London 2018

Call for Speakers

It is that time of year again and the planning for this year's London EA User Group is returning to Code Node.

The event will be two days made up of a training day & a day of presentations. London 2018 will be taking place slightly later this year in early June.

The first day we will be kicking things off with the training day which will again consist of multiple half day sessions. Day two will see us back for the traditional day of user stories, technical expertise, lessons learnt and networking.

We are opening this call for speakers to all of you that would be interested in hosting a half day training session and / or presenting on day two. We would love to hear about everything you do with Enterprise Architect, from the organisation of your model to enhancements you have made using MDG or the automation API.

That said, we are not just after the sunshine stories and would be interested in hearing about any experiences learned the hard way. If you or your organisation have something interesting to share, then please get in touch with your topic ideas.

The call for speakers will close on March 29th, make sure we have your submissions!

Please submit a brief abstract of your topic, and indicate whether it would be suitable for a half day training session or 45 minute presentation.

Please send your submissions for topics or training sessions to This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. of Dunstan Thomas Consulting for collation. Once the call for speakers is closed you will be contacted about your participation.

HTML Report 2, Electric Boogaloo

As a sequel to my previous article on how to edit the CSS generated by Enterprise Architect to personalise your generated HTML report I was prompted by Guillaume to create this follow up as he gave me an idea on how to make these changes prior to generation. As we have already identified the changes that we need to make in the previous article we can actually create our own customised version of the CSS EA would use and specify that this is then used as we create our HTML report.

So how do we do this?

Keeping in mind the list of changes that we need to make:

Change the attributes for .IndexHeader so that the logo fits within the header of the report.

Change the attributes for .IndexBody to cater for the changes that we have made to the header.

Change the attributes for #contentIFrame so that the content section of the report fills the correct amount of the screen.

Change the attributes of #tocIFrame so the table of content is displayed correctly.

With these changes in mind we are ready to get to work on defining our template. To do this you will need to fire up EA. At the bottom of your project browser you will see a tab labelled Resources, click this…

Having clicked this your view will change to…

You will then need to click into the section for Document Generation…

Next, right click Web Style Templates and choose Create HTML Template. This will bring up the following dialog…

Enter a name for your new template and a new window will open…

You can select any of the options listed in the left hand pane for editing by simply clicking on them. As the changes we are looking to make are relatively simple the only option that we need to concern ourselves with is CSS – Main. Click this option and you will see the following…

You will then see the CSS display itself in the right hand pane, navigate to the areas of interest by pressing ctrl+f and entering the headings outlined earlier. Clicking on the find next button will take you to these areas in the CSS and you can make the necessary changes. Once you have made the changes click save and then click close. With these actions complete you are now ready to generate a new HTML report that will automatically use your custom CSS.

As before right click on your project in the project browser and choose HTML Report…

Clicking this will display the familiar dialog…

Under the Style option you will now be able to have a drop down menu that will list the names of any custom templates that you have created. For this example, I have changed the style to be the CUSTOM template created earlier in this article, this means that when we generate our report EA will now use our predefined custom CSS rather than the standard set. We also need to specify our logo as before, then click Generate.

The result is that our HTML report has been generated with no changes to be made and that we can re-use our template every time that we need to create this kind of report…

Editing an HTML report generated from Enterprise Architect using CSS

Introduction

This article will walk you through the process of making a couple of simple tweaks to your HTML Report generated from Sparx Systems Enterprise Architect.

So what's the challenge here?

If you have ever needed to create a quick and simple report to walk a colleague or stakeholder through certain aspects of your model, then by far the quickest and easiest route is to generate an HTML Report from EA.

This will create an HTML version of your project locally that can be navigated & drilled down into (but not updated etc). When creating this report, you have the option to include your own logo as a way of adding a little bit of an extra visual engagement to your publication.

The challenge that you can, and will likely, run into is that there is a set size for the logo that EA does not tell you about and you will not see the effect of until you view the report and see that your logo is cut off by content.

How do I fix this?

To start you will need to generate an HTML report from your model. If you are not sure of how to do this simply right click the root node of your model in EA and choose “HTML Report” from the menu…

When you click this option you will be presented with the following dialog…

In this dialog check all the options that you want to include in your report and specify your output destination folder and your logo image. When ready, click “Generate” and you will have a progress bar pop up momentarily while EA generates your report.

When this process has finished you can either click “View” or navigate to your Output folder & open the file “Index.htm” (there will be other files & folders generated as well but for now this all you will need).

When opened you will see something like this….

As you can see, the logo is too big for the report and there is no way to address this issue inside of EA.

So what do we do?

The Solution!

The first thing we do is to open up the HTML report using Chrome. This itself posed its own challenge initially as out of the box Chrome does not really support file based URLs, but there is a work around for this (thanks to Phil Chudley for showing me this).

Firstly, find your shortcut for Chrome, right click it and choose “Properties”. When the Properties window appears locate the section labelled “Target” and add the following to the end of the information there:

--allow-file-access-from-files

Make sure that you include a space between …chrome.exe” and the string shown above for this to work.

We now need to make some changes to the HTML report.

Earlier I mentioned that there are several files generated at your output destination when you create this HTML report. One of those folders is titled CSS and contains two files, you will need to open the “ea.css”, personally I use Notepad for this but there are a host of tools you could use.

With your CSS file open and with Chrome displaying your report it’s time to start editing.

Hover your cursor over your logo, right click and choose the “Inspect” tool…

This will open up a new Chrome window displaying the developer tools…

The sections that we will need to pay attention to are:

IndexHeader; this will be apparent immediately if you choose to inspect the logo

IndexBody; you will see this below IndexHeader but you will also need to expand this section clicking the triangular icon to the left of it to expose the other areas we need:

tocIFrame; this is the section of the page containing the model tree in your report

contentIFrame; this is the main section of your report that displays your information

.IndexHeader

This is the CSS controlling the display of this section of the report. The important factor here is the height property. As you can see, it is by default only 60 pixels tall and in our example the logo is larger than this.

To adjust this click into the area where it displays “60px”. You can overwrite this with your desired figure or you can adjust it your logo by using the up arrow to increase the height one pixel at a time. In our example I changed mine to 91px.

With your ea.css file open you will need to find .IndexHeader in there and adjust the height to your new value. Save but don’t close your ea.css file.

You will, for now, still see something similar to this…

What we now need to do is make the body of our report work with the changes that we have made to the header.

To do this we need to make some changes to the section of the CSS for .IndexBody

.IndexBody

Using the developer tools window you now need to pay attention to the CSS for this section…

The change we need to make here is to the position attribute from position: absolute; to position: inherit;

You will see that this changes the position of the body of the report allowing the header section to be fully displayed along with our logo...

Make sure to adjust this section in your ea.css file & save.

You will notice that this has created a new issue in that the frame housing our table of contents has now shrunk. You can still expand and use this section as you normally would however it quickly results in excessive scrolling. This is something that we don’t want and so we will need to make a couple more changes to fix this.

#contentIFrame

This is the frame that displays our content & in the developer tools it will look like this…

In the developer tools this section will appear grey and so cannot be edited there. Instead you will need to locate this section in the ea.css file and make the change there without previewing it.

The change that you will need to make is to the attribute height: 100%; to instead be height: -webkit-fill-available; as shown above. Then save your ea.css file. This will set the size for the main display frame.

Next we need to look at the frame for the table of contents.

#tocIFrame

To make our Iframe look correct we will need to make the same change as we have just made to the content frame…

Again the change that you will need to make is to the attribute height: 100%; to instead be height: -webkit-fill-available; as shown above.

Then save your ea.css file.

You have now completed the changes necessary to have your HTML report display properly and with your own logo. From now on you will see something akin to this upon opening…

Everything is now exactly where you would expect it to be and in a useable fashion.

There is something to bear in mind should you choose to use this method. If after following this method, you need to make changes to your model & regenerate the HTML report to the same output destination then your changes to the CSS will be overwritten as well.

To get around this, before you regenerate your HTML report simply rename the ea.css file to something else e.g. ea – NEW.css and then regenerate the report.

What you find now is that in the CSS folder in your output destination there will now be another file called ea.css and this is the one that the report will default to. Simply delete this file and rename the ea – NEW.css file back to ea.css having done this your updated report will open & use your modified CSS still.

Obviously there is a lot more styling you could apply by using the CSS, this is just a simple fix for a particularly common bugbear with the HTML Report.

Enterprise Architect User Group

London 2017; 18th - 19th May

The London

2017 meeting of the Enterprise Architect User Group sees a shakeup to the agenda in the form of an additional day being added to the roster. In additional to the traditional presentation day of User Stories, How to's etc the extra day added to the event is taking the form of a training day.

The training day adds to the event a selection of six, three hour training sessions on a variety of subjects from BPMN to TOGAF and Model Curation.